You might enter bills in QuickBooks for the majority of your vendor transactions so you can take advantage of early payment discounts or pay bills just before they’re due. But you’re still likely to handwrite a quick check from time to time to pay for an expense immediately. For example, when the person who plows your parking lot knocks on the door and asks for payment, he won’t want to wait while you step through the bill-entering and bill-paying process in QuickBooks—he just wants his $100. And if you write only a couple of checks a month, there’s nothing wrong with writing checks to pay vendors without entering a bill in QuickBooks.

When you’re new to QuickBooks and want some guidance, use the Write Checks dialog box to make sure you enter everything you need. In no time, you’ll grow tired of all the clicking and handholding. At that point, you can switch to recording checks in QuickBooks’ checking account register. This section describes how to do both.